Ladies
and gentleman, citizens of the United States, former free persons and
torches of Liberty! I don’t want to be the one who breaks this news to you,
but somebody has to, and it might as well be me.

Listen up, because this is
terribly important. Not just your own future, but the future of all
generations after you will depend upon it.

You’re not scared enough.
You’re not scared nearly enough. You should be frightened out of your wits
and, apparently, you’re not.

Don’t take my word for it –
it’s official. Last week, the so-called “independent” National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- otherwise known as the 9/11
Commission – concluded in its final report, not just that further terrorist
assaults on the U.S. are “possible – even probable,” but that these are
likely to be “deadlier” than the ones that killed nearly 3000 people in
September 2001.

It’s hard to know, of
course, what the commission means by “deadlier.” Do they mean that more than
3000 people will die next time, or that those who do will be more dead than
the others?

No matter. “We are not
safe,” the commission says.

“We were asleep at the
wheel,” it says.

“We may have been shocked,”
it says, “but we should not be surprised.”

Right. No “surprise” when
the two tallest buildings in the world go down to fiery doom, taking
everyone in and around them with it. The commission’s Republican chair,
former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, adds, for the record, “Time is not
on our side.”

Time isn’t on anyone’s
side, when you think about it, but the only thing Kean and his crew can
recommend is a new “security” chief to oversee all “intelligence gathering”
in this land, a federal position – yes, another one -- to be created,
appointed and approved by “the President,” whoever that is. At the moment,
it’s George W. Bush, whose regime (full circle here) was “asleep at the
wheel” the first time around. Just give it another week and they’ll be
calling the new guy “Security Czar.”

“We deliberately made the
decision not to play the blame game,” says Kean’s “bipartisan” co-chair,
Democrat Lee Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana who has never in
his life come down on the square side of anything. “We’re looking to the
future, not the past.”

Sweet. This is where “the
people” – whose husbands, wives, children and partners died in the 9/11
disaster – aren’t allowed to spit over the ropes. This is where, and how,
the commission keeps them in place. This is the technique of all usurpation
in our time, from the highest levels of national life to the lowest rip-offs
of budget funding in Vermont: “I’m so sorry. Here, we don’t `revisit’ the
past. We look to the future!”

That’s going to help a lot
– really, a lot. When “the past” is forbidden territory – “past history,” as
the flunkies say – and “the blame game” is never played, there’s no one to
punish but you and me, down here on the street.

You think I’m kidding? Even
before the 9/11 report was released last week, the American Red Cross called
a pow-wow at George Washington University in Foggy Bottom, in the nation’s
capital, to talk about “American vigilance” in the face of “catastrophic
attack.” As I said at the start, it seems that none of you are taking it
seriously enough.

“Only two in ten Americans
feel ‘very
prepared’ for a catastrophic event,” according to the ARC: “Only about half
of parents polled knew the disaster plans of their child’s school or
daycare; the number of people who are familiar with the disaster plan at
their workplace is also only about half; and the number of people who said
that they have a family emergency plan that includes a place to meet if they
are evacuated … has plummeted in the last year. In fact, only one in ten
American households has a family emergency plan, a disaster kit, and
training in first aid and CPR.”

Evidently the world still
needs a lot of teaching in how to be blown into smithereens.

“We need to narrow the
universe of the unprepared,” says American Red Cross President Marsha Evans,
who, by the sight of her, wouldn’t recognize the universe of anyone not
already outfitted like Mia Farrow in “petite” escape clothes. “Whether it’s
an act of terrorism or an act of God, there are five easy steps you can take
to prepare for it! You can make a plan, build a kit, get trained, volunteer
and give blood – the five basic building blocks of the `Red Cross Together
We Prepare’ program!”

Please note that the
American Red Cross isn’t the same as the International Committee of the Red
Cross -- the valiant body that goes into any battle zone, come hell or high
water, to assist the dying and wounded – and that Evans is speaking only for
a tiny minority of rich, white Americans on committees. She is a woman of
such emptiness, such depth of non-comprehension, that she can actually add
to these insults:

“Unprepared Americans fall
into five categories: ‘head
scratchers,’ who don't know where to find preparedness advice; ‘head
in the sand’ types, who believe preparation is unimportant; ‘head
in the clouds’ people, who mistakenly believe they are ready; the ‘headset
crowd’ that is too busy and can't find time to do it; and people who `simply
haven't thought about preparedness.’”

These are the people, I’d
guess, who actually have heads. “Our goal is to achieve seamless
protection,” says Homeland Security “czar” Tom Ridge, who shared the podium
with Evans last week and who speaks in the voice of the Bush administration
-- “a nation knit tightly together by shared vigilance.”